Joost Schmidt

Biography

Publicity, posters, type designs, exhibition stands, maps. Born 5 January 1893 in Wunstorf near Hannover. 1910-14: studied painting at the Weimar Hochschule für Bildende Künste. 1914: wounded in military service. 1919: studied wood carving and typography at the Bauhaus. 1922-8: designed Bauhaus printed matter, poster, journal covers and advertisements. 1925-32: taught at the Bauhaus, Dessau. 1928-32: head of the commercial art department and printing workshop at the Bauhaus. 1929: designed Junker exhibition stand for ‘Gas und Wasser’, Berlin. 1931: publicity work for city of Dessau. 1932: designed a typeface and exhibition stand for Uhertype, Leipzig Fair. 1933: worked as cartographer in Berlin. 1934: designed Nichteisen-Metall-Industrie exhibition stand with Walter Gropius for the Berlin exhibition Deutsches Volk. Deutsche Arbeit . From 1934: works as a map artist for publisher. 1935-6: taught at private art school; then forbidden to teach by Nazis. November 1943: studio destroyed in air raid. March 1944: conscripted but soon hospitalised with malaria relapse (from 1914); works in war map headquarters, Saalfield. From 1945: taught at Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Berlin. Died 2 December 1948 in Nuremberg.

Writings by

    ‘Schrift?’, Bauhaus (journal), v. 2/3, 1928 (repr. in Schmidt, 1984
  • see below)
  • ‘On lettering’, in Hans M. Wingler, The Bauhaus, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969, p. 161.

Writings about

  • Joost Schmidt. Lehre und Arbeit am Bauhaus 1919-32, Düsseldorf: Marzona, 1984 (photo of JS, p. 115 )
  • Meggs, 1998
  • Benezit, 2006
  • Christopher Burke, Active literature / Jan Tschichold and New Typography, London: Hyphen, 2007 (esp. pp. 224-6).
  • Friedrich Friedl, Nicolaus Ott, Bernard Stein, Typography – when/who/how, Cologne: Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 1998., 1998